President Bush told
us that this war will be unlike any other in our Nations history. He was right.
After our initial expeditionary responses and successful major combat operations in
Afghanistan and Iraq, those operations have become protracted campaigns where we are
providing the conditions of security needed to wage a conflicta war of ideas.
This is not simply a fight against terrorterror is a tactic. This is not simply a
fight against al Qaeda, its affiliates and adherentsthey are foot soldiers. This is
not simply a fight to bring democracy to the Middle Eastthat is a strategic
objective. This is a fight for the very ideas at the foundation of our society, the way of
life those ideas enable, and the freedoms we enjoy.

The single most
significant component of our new strategic reality is that because of the centrality of
the ideas in conflict, this war will be a protracted one. Whereas for most of our lives
the default condition has been peace, now our default expectation must be conflict. This
new strategic context is the logic for reshaping the Army to be an Army of campaign
quality with joint and expeditionary capabilities. The lessons learned in two and a half
years of war have already propelled a wide series of changes in the Army and across the
Joint team.

This learning
process must not stop. Although this article outlines the strategic context for the series
of changes under way in our Army, its purpose is not to convince you or even to inform
you. Its purpose is to cause you to reflect on and think about this new strategic context
and what it portends for our future and for the Nation. All great changes in our Army have
been accompanied by earnest dialogue and active debate at all levelsboth within the
Army and with those who care about the Army. As this article states, The best way to
anticipate the future is to create it. Your thoughtful participation in this
dialogue is key to creating that future.

Les Brownlee
Acting Secretary of the Army

General Peter J.
Schoomaker
Chief of Staff, US Army

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Serving a Nation at
War:
A Campaign Quality Army
with Joint and
Expeditionary Capabilities

LES BROWNLEE and
PETER J. SCHOOMAKER

From Parameters, Summer 2004, pp. 4-23.

The first, the
supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the
statesman and commander have to make is to establish . . . the kind of war
on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it
into, something that it is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic
questions and the most comprehensive.
 Clausewitz, On War

America is a Nation at war. To win this war, we must meld all
elements of our national power in a determined and relentless campaign to defeat enemies
who challenge our way of life. This is not a contingency, nor is it a
crisis. It is a new reality that Soldiers understand all too well: since 9/11,
they have witnessed more than a battalions worth of their comrades killed in action,
more than a brigades worth severely wounded. Their sacrifice has liberated more than
46 million people. As these words are written, the Army is completing the largest rotation
of forces in its history, and all 18 of its divisions have seen action in Bosnia, Kosovo,
Afghanistan, or Iraq. We have activated more than 244,000 Soldiers of the Army National
Guard and Army Reserve in the last two years, and more than a divisions worth of
Soldiers support homeland security missions. Over 300,000 Soldiers are
forward-deployed. Like our Nation, we are an Army at war.

For any war, as
Clausewitz pointed out, it is essential to understand the kind of war on which [we]
are embarking. Although the fundamental nature of war is constant, its methods and
techniques constantly change to reflect the strategic context and operational capabilities
at hand. The United States is

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driving a rapid
evolution in the methods and techniques of war. Our overwhelming success in this endeavor,
however, has driven many adversaries to seek their own adaptive advantages through
asymmetric means and methods.

Some enemies,
indeed, are almost perfectly asymmetric. Non-state actors, in particular, project no
mirror image of the nation-state model that has dominated global relationships for the
last few centuries. They are asymmetric in means. They are asymmetric in motivation: they
dont value what we value; they dont fear what we fear. Whereas our government
is necessarily hierarchical, these enemies are a network. Whereas we develop rules of
engagement to limit tactical collateral damage, they feel morally unconstrained in their
efforts to deliver strategic effects. Highly adaptive, they are self-organizing on the
basis of ideas alone, exposing very little of targetable value in terms of infrastructure
or institutions. To better understand such a war, we must examine the broader context of
conflict, the competition of ideas.

A cursory
examination of the ideas in competition may forecast the depth and duration of this
conflict. The United States, its economy dependent on overseas markets and trade, has
contributed to a wave of globalization both in markets and in ideas. Throughout much of
the world, political pluralism, economic competition, unfettered trade, and tolerance of
diversity have produced the greatest individual freedom and material abundance in human
history. Other parts of the world remain mired in economic deprivation, political failure,
and social resentment. Many remain irreconcilably opposed to religious freedom, secular
pluralism, and modernization. Although not all

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have taken up arms
in this war of ideas, such irreconcilables comprise millions of potential combatants.

Meanwhile, not all
former strategic threats have vanished. In the Far East, North Koreas nuclearization
risks intensifying more than 50 years of unremitting hostility, and many others pursue
weapons of mass destruction. We confront the growing danger that such weapons will find
their way into the hands of non-state groups or individuals. Armed with such weapons and
with no infrastructure of their own at risk, such super-empowered individuals
could be anxious to apply them to our homeland.

On the international
landscape the significance of American dominance in world affairs has not been lost on
other states. Many are envious, some are fearful, and others believe that the sole
superpower must be curbed. This presents fertile soil for competitive coalitions and
alliances between states and non-state actors aimed at curtailing US strengths and
influence. Such strategic challenges have the potential to become strategic threats at
some point in the future.

At the same time, in
a globalizing world, military-capable technology is increasingly fungible, and thus
potential adversaries may have the means to achieve parity or even superiority in niche
technologies tailored to their military ambitions. For us and for them, those technologies
facilitate increasingly rapid, simultaneous, and non-contiguous military operations. Such
operations increasingly characterize todays conflicts, and portend daunting future
operational challenges.

We must prepare for
the future, then, even as we relentlessly pursue those who seek the destruction of our way
of life, and while waging a prolonged war of ideas to alter the conditions that motivate
our enemies. Some might equate these challenges to the Cold War, but there are critical
distinctions:

Our non-state
adversaries are not satisfied with a cold standoff, but instead seek at every
turn to make it hot.

Our own forces
cannot focus solely on future overseas contingencies, but also must defend bases and
facilities both at home and abroad.

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Because some of
our adversaries are not easily deterred, our national strategy is not
defensive but preventive.

Above all, because at least some current
adversaries consider peaceful coexistence with the United States unacceptable,
we must either alter the conditions and convictions prompting their hostilityor
destroy them outright by war.

That is not the
strategic context for which we designed todays United States Army. Hence, our Army
today confronts the supreme test of all armies: to adapt rapidly to circumstances that
it could not foresee.

Change in a
Time of War

The Army always has
changed and always will. But an army at war must change the way it changes. In peacetime,
armies change slowly and deliberately. Modern warfare is immensely complex. The vast array
of capabilities, skills, techniques, and organizations of war is a recipe for chaos
without thoughtful planning to assure interoperability, synchronization, and synergy.
Second- and third-order effects of a change in any part of this intricate mechanism are
difficult to forecast, and the consequences of misjudgment can be immense.

Peacetime also tends
to subordinate effectiveness to economy, and joint collaboration to the inevitable
competition for budgets and programs. Institutional energies tend to focus on preserving
force structure and budgetary programs of record. Resource risk is spread across budget
years and programs, including forces in the field.

Today, that measured
approach to change will not suffice. Our current force is engaged, and in ways we could
not perfectly forecast. Our immediate demands are urgent, and fielding capabilities in the
near term may outweigh protection of the program of record. We will shift resource risk
away from fighting Soldiers.

To be sure, this
urgency does not excuse us from the obligation to prepare for the future, for the
prolongation of this conflict as well as the possible outbreak of others we cannot
predict. But it does significantly blur the usual dichotomy between the current and future
force. We must ensure that we apply lessons learned from todays fight to those
future force programs, even if that means adjusting their direction and timing. In short,
change in a time of war must deal simultaneously with both current and future needs.

It must also pervade
our entire institution. The Army cannot restrict change solely to its operating forces.
The same Soldiers and leaders who adapt, learn, and innovate on our battlefields also
drive our institutional Army. We must match our success on the battlefield with successful
adaptation of the Army at home. Such adaptation already is under way in the expan-

8/9

sion and retailoring
of our combat training centers, the establishment of a Futures Center in Training and
Doctrine Command, reformulation of the Army Campaign Plan, and a wide range of
consolidation and reorganization initiatives in Army major commands.

Fundamental to this
adaptation will be our rapid evolution to a campaign-quality Army with joint and
expeditionary capabilities.

An Expeditionary
Mindset

The Army is no
stranger to expeditionary operations. World War I saw deployment of the American
Expeditionary Forces, and World War II the Allied Expeditionary Force. Throughout its
history the Army has executed a wide array of deployments. But many today no longer
perceive the United States Army to be expeditionary. Some might argue that the primary
distinction of an expeditionary operation is its short duration. Neither history nor
strategic guidancewhich calls for expeditionary forces capable of sustained
operationsconfirms such a definition. Others view expeditionary as speed of
responsiveness, but this perception, too, is not complete. In the Cold War, the United
States was committed to reinforce Europe with ten divisions within ten days, but no one
perceived that responsiveness as expeditionary. The reason for this is significant: in the
Cold War we knew where we would fight and we met this requirement through prepositioning
of units or unit sets in a very developed theater. The uncertainty as to where we must
deploy, the probability of a very austere operational environment, and the requirement to
fight on arrival throughout the battlespace pose an entirely different challengeand
the fundamental distinction of expeditionary operations.

This challenge is
above all one of mindset, because decades of planning and preparation against set-piece
enemies predisposed American Soldiers to seek certainty and synchronization in the
application of force. We have engaged repeatedly in conditions of uncertainty and
ambiguity, to be sure, but always viewing such operations as the exception rather than the
rule. That can no longer be the case. In this globalized world, our enemies shift
resources and activities to those areas least accessible to us. As elusive and adaptive
enemies seek refuge in the far corners of the earth, the norm will be short-notice
operations, extremely austere theaters of operation, and incomplete
informationindeed, the requirement to fight for information, rather

9/10

than fight with
information. Soldiers with a joint and expeditionary mindset will be confident that they
are organized, trained, and equipped to go anywhere in the world, at any time, in any
environment, against any adversary, to accomplish the assigned mission.

A Joint Mindset

The touchstone of
Americas way of war is combined arms warfare. Each of our armed services excels in
combining a wide array of technologies and tools in each dimensionland, air, sea,
and spaceto generate a synergy of effects that creates overwhelming dilemmas for our
opponents. Today, that same emphasis on combinations extends beyond each service to joint
operations. No longer satisfied merely to deconflict the activities of the several
services, we now seek joint interdependence.

Interdependence is
more than just interoperability, the assurance that service capabilities can work together
smoothly. It is even more than integration to improve their collective efficiency and
effectiveness. Joint interdependence purposefully combines service capabilities to
maximize their total complementary and reinforcing effects, while minimizing their
relative vulnerabilities. There are several compelling reasons for doing so:

First, modern
technology has extended the reach of weapons far beyond their dimensions of
origin. For example, land-based cruise missiles threaten ships at sea, and
land-based air defenses pose challenges to air-, sea-, and even space-based capabilities.
Merely defeating the mirror-image threat within a services primary dimension of
interest can no longer suffice.

Second, in addition to achieving daunting
supremacy within the air, maritime, and space dimensions, our sister services are
developing increasingly powerful capabilities that can influence land combat directly.

Finally, the nature
of expeditionary operations argues for leveraging every potential tool of speed,
operational reach, and precision. By projecting coordinated combinations of force
unhindered by distance and generally independent of terrain, we can achieve maximum effect
for the Joint Force Commander without regard to the service of origin.

At the strategic
level, interdependence has long pervaded the Armys thinking. Lacking organic
strategic lift, we can neither deploy nor sustain ourselves without the support of the
other services. But our commitment to interdependence has not always extended to the
tactical level. Constrained by the tyranny of terrain, ground forces operate in a world of
friction and position. Command and control are fragile, the risk of surprise is
omnipresent, and our mobility advantage is relatively limited vis-à-vis our adversaries.
Once committed, we must prevail. The decisive nature of land combat underscores a
preference for organizational autonomy and redundancy, and tends to preju-

10/11

dice Soldiers
against relying on others for essential ingredients of tactical survival and success. In
the past, moreover, that prejudice too often has prompted interservice rivalries
reflecting concerns far removed from the practical imperatives of the battlefield.

A nation at war
cannot afford that indulgence. War relentlessly exposes theories built upon prejudice
rather than proof, and Iraq and Afghanistan have been no different. The air-, sea-, or
land-power debates are over. Our collective future is irrefutably joint. To meet the
challenges of expeditionary operations, the Army can and must embrace the capabilities of
its sister services right down to the tactical level. In turn, that will require us to
develop operational concepts, capabilities, and training programs that are joint from the
outset, not merely as an afterthought.

The prerequisites of
a commitment to interdependence are broad understanding of the differing strengths and
limitations of each services capabilities, clear agreement about how those
capabilities will be integrated in any given operational setting, and absolute mutual
trust that, once committed, they will be employed as agreed. At the same time, the Army
requires a similar commitment from its sister services. The ultimate test of
interdependence is at the very tip of the spear, where the rifleman carries the greatest
burden of risk with the least intrinsic technological advantage. No concept of
interdependence will suffice that does not enable the frontline Soldier and Marine.

The same logic and
spirit that informs joint interdependence also underscores the role of interagency and
multinational operations. In a sustained conflict that is a war of ideas, all interagency
elements of our national power must work in concert with allies and coalition partners to
alter the conditions that motivate our adversaries.

A
Campaign-Quality Army

While our recent
combat employments in Afghanistan and Iraq were models of rapid and effective offensive
operations, they also demonstrate that neither the duration nor the character of even the
most successful military campaign is readily predictable. Especially in wars intended to
liberate rather than subjugate, victory entails winning a competition of ideas, and
thereby fundamentally changing the conditions that prompted the conflict. Long after the
defeat of Taliban and Iraqi military forces, we continue to wage just such campaigns in
Afghanistan and Iraq.

The campaign quality
of an Army thus is not only its ability to win decisive combat operations, but also its
ability to sustain those operations for as long as necessary, adapting them as required to
unpredictable and often profound changes in the context and character of the conflict. The
Armys preeminent challenge is to reconcile expeditionary agility and responsive-

11/12

ness with the
staying power, durability, and adaptability to carry a conflict to a victorious conclusion
no matter what form it eventually takes.

Are You
Wearing Your Dog Tags?

Does that question
surprise you? It might if you view peace as our default condition, and war the exception.
But our new reality is very different:

A conflict of irreconcilable ideas.

A disparate pool of potential combatants.

Adaptive adversaries seeking our
destruction by any means possible.

Evolving asymmetric threats that will
relentlessly seek shelter in those environments and methods for which we are least
prepared.

A foreseeable
future of extended conflict in which we can expect to fight every day, and in which real
peace will be the anomaly.

This new reality
drives the transformation under way in the Army. It is the lens that shapes our perception
and interpretation of the future, and governs our responses to its challenges. It is the
logic for a campaign-quality Army with joint and expeditionary capabilities. Are you
wearing your dog tags?

Changing for
Conflict

The Center of Our
Formations

Our core
competencies remain: to train and equip Soldiers and grow leaders; and to provide relevant
and ready landpower to the Combatant Commander and the joint team. Therefore even in a
time of profound change, the American Soldier will remain the center of our formations. In
a conflict of daunting complexity and diversity, the Soldier is the ultimate platform.
Delinkable from everything other than his values, the Soldier remains the
irreplaceable base of the dynamic array of combinations that America can generate to
defeat our enemies in any expeditionary environment. As the ultimate combination of sensor
and shooter, the American Soldier is irrefutable proof that people are more important than
hardware and quality more important than quantity.

Making that Soldier
more effective and survivable is the first requirement of adaptation to a joint and
expeditionary environment. However much the tools of war may improve, only Soldiers
willing and able to endure wars hardships can exploit them. Their skills will change
as the specialization characteristic of industrial-age warfare gives way to the
information-age need for greater flexibility and versatility. What will not change is
their warrior ethos.

That ethos reflects
the spirit of the pioneers who built America, of whom it rightly was said, The
cowards never started. The brave arrived.

12/13

Only the tough
survived. It is a subtle, offensive spirit based on quiet competence. It is an ethos
that recognizes that closing with an enemy is not just a matter of killing, but rather is
the ultimate responsibility reserved for the most responsible and the most disciplined.
Only the true warrior ethos can moderate wars inevitable brutality.

Just as the
post-9/11 operational environment has fundamentally changed, so too should the
expectations of the Americans entering Army service. We will seek individuals ready and
willing for warrior service. Bound to each other by integrity and trust, the young
Americans we welcome to our ranks will learn that in the Army, every Soldier is a leader,
responsible for what happens in his or her presence regardless of rank. They will value
learning and adaptability at every level, particularly as it contributes to initiative:
creating situations for an adversary, rather than reacting to them. They will learn that
the Armys culture is one of selfless service, a warrior culture rather than a
corporate one. As such, it is not important who gets the credit, either within the Army or
within the joint team; whats important is that the nation is served.

Organizing for
Conflict

Confronting an
adaptive adversary, no single solution will succeed, no matter how elegant, synchronized,
or advanced. Its very perfection will ensure its irrelevance, for an adaptive
enemy will relentlessly eliminate the vulnerabilities that solution seeks to exploit and
avoid the conditions necessary for its success. Instead, the foundations of Army
Transformation must be diversity and adaptability. The Army must retain a wide range of
capabilities while significantly improving its agility and versatility. Building a joint
and expeditionary Army with campaign qualities will require versatile forces that can
mount smaller, shorter duration operations routinelywithout penalty to the
Armys capability for larger, more protracted campaigns.

Modular Units.
A key prerequisite to achieving that capability is developing more modular tactical
organizations. The Armys force design has incorporated tailoring and task
organization for decades, but primarily in the context of a large conventional war in
which all echelons from platoon to Army Service Component Command were deployed. This
presumption of infrequent large-scale deployment encouraged the Army to centralize certain
functions at higher echelons of command, and implicitly assumed that deployment would
largely be complete before significant employment began. Moreover, presuming peace to be
the default condition, the Army garrisoned the bulk of its tactical units to optimize
economic efficiency and management convenience rather than combined-arms training and
rapid deployability. Above all, the Army designed its capabilities to satisfy every
tactical requirement autonomously, viewing sister service capabilities as supplementary.

13/14

These presumptions
no longer apply. Near-simultaneous employment and deployment increasingly characterize
Army operations, and those operations are increasingly diverse in both purpose and scope.
Tailoring and task-organizing our current force structure for such operations renders an
ad hoc deployed force and a nondeployed residue of partially disassembled units,
diminishing the effectiveness of both. The premium now is on employed combined-arms
effectiveness at lower levels vice efficiency at macro levels. Peace will be the
exception, and both tactical organizations and garrison configurations must support
expeditionary deployment, not simply improvise it. Force design must catch up with
strategic reality.

That strategic
reality is the immediate need for versatile, cohesive unitsand more of them.
Increasingly, ownership of capabilities by echelons and even by services matters less than
how those capabilities are allocated to missions. Although divisions have long been the
nominal measure of the Armys fighting strength, the Army also has a long history of
deployment and employment of multifunctional brigade combat teams. In addition, the Army
has a broad array of reinforcing capabilitiesboth units and headquartersbut we
can significantly improve their modularity. In the future, by shifting to such brigade
combat teams as our basic units of action, enabling them routinely with adequate combat,
combat support, and sustainment capabilities, and assuring them connectivity to
headquarters and joint assets, we can significantly improve the tailorability,
scalability, and fightability of the Armys contribution to the overall
joint fight. At the same time, the inherent robustness and self-sufficiency of brigade
combat teams will enhance their ability to deploy rapidly and fight on arrival.

Being expeditionary
is far less about deployability than about operational and tactical agility, including the
ability to reach routinely beyond organic capabilities for required effects. If in the
process the Army can leverage our sister services mobility, reach, and lethality to
satisfy some of those mission requirements, all the better. To achieve that, we must
expand our view of Army force design to encompass the entire range of available joint
capabilities. At the end of the day, squads and platoons will continue to win our
engagements, but no one can reliably predictparticularly in the emerging operational
environmentwhich squads or platoons will carry the decisive burden of the fight. In
an expeditionary army, small units must be so well networked that whichever makes contact
can leverage all joint capabilities to fight and win.

Such joint
interdependence is not unidirectional. The more modular the Armys capabilities, the
better we will be able to support our sister services, whether by the air defense
protection of an advanced sea base, compelling an enemy ground force to mass and thereby
furnish targets for air attack,

14/15

or exploiting the
transitory effects of precision fires with the more permanent effects of ground maneuver.

Modular
Headquarters. The transformation of our headquarters will be even more dramatic than
that of our units, for we will sever the routine association between headquarters and the
units they control. At division level and higher, headquarters will surrender organic
subordinate formations, becoming themselves streamlined modular organizations capable of
commanding and controlling any combination of capabilitiesArmy, joint, or coalition.
For that purpose, the headquarters themselves will be more robust, staffed to minimize the
requirement for augmentation. They will employ separable, deployable command posts for
rapid response and entry; link to Home Station Operation Centers to minimize forward
footprints; and be network-enabled organizations capable of commanding or supporting joint
and multinational as well as Army forces.

Trained, cohesive
staffs are key to combat effectiveness. Today, because our tactical headquarters elements
lack the necessary joint interfaces, we have to improvise these when operations begin.
That must change. Major tactical headquarters must be capable of conducting Joint Force
Land Component Command (JFLCC) operations. Major operational headquarters must have enough
permanent sister-service staff positions to receive and employ a Standing Joint Force
Headquarters (SJFHQ) plug, enabling them with equal effectiveness to serve as an Army
Service Component Command, Joint Task Force, or JFLCC headquarters.

Stabilizing the
Force. Paradoxically, an Army that seeks maximum flexibility through modularity must
simultaneously maximize unit cohesion where it counts, within our companies, battalions,
and brigades. Again, our altered strategic context is the driver. In the past, our
approach to unit manning reflected the industrial age in which our forces were developed.
Processes treated people as interchangeable parts, and valued their administrative
availability more highly than their individual and team proficiency. At the unit level,
manning and equipping reflected a first-to-last strategic deployment system.
Peace was the default condition, allowing late-deploying units to fill out over time,
typically by individual replacements, during the expected prolonged transition from peace
to war.

15/16

At a time when
protracted conflict has become the norm, during which we will repeatedly deploy and employ
major portions of our Army, such an approach to manning will not work. Instead, units will
need to achieve and sustain a level of readiness far exceeding the ability of any
individual manning system. The effects we seek are broad: continuity in training,
stability of leadership, unit cohesion, enhanced unit effectiveness, and greater
deployment predictability for Soldiers and their families.

To achieve these
effects we are undertaking the most significant revision in manning policy in our
Armys history. It entails four key changes:

First, we will shift the logic of our
force structure from a scenario basis to a capability basis. We will need an adequate
level of capability not only for employment, but also rotation for training, refitting,
and rest. This does not preclude the requirement or the capability to surge for crisis
response, but sustained commitment and rotation will be the expected requirement.

Second, we must abandon tiering unit
readiness by early and late deployers. There will be no late
deployers, merely future deployers who are at different stages of their
rotation cycle.

Third, we must synchronize our
Soldiers tours with their units rotation cycles. While accidents and
casualties will preclude eliminating individual replacement altogether, we must minimize
routine attrition of deployed units.

Finally, we must stabilize the assignment
of Soldiers and their families at home stations and communities across recurring
rotations.

As any personnel
manager would tell you, This changes everything. And so it should.
Todays individual Soldier and leader development programs, for example, do not
accommodate force stabilization. They will change. Current command tour policies do not
accommodate force stabilization. They will change. There have been many previous attempts
to experiment with force stabilization, but those attempts always focused narrowly on only
a few portions of the Army and invariably failed as a result. The Army will undertake a
comprehensive policy redesign to stabilize the force.

Adjusting the
Total Force Mix

Changes in our
reserve component organizations will match those in the active component. Reserve
component forces are a vital part of the Armys deployable combat power. The National
Guard will continue to provide strategic and operational depth and flexibility; the Army
Reserve will still reinforce the Army with skill-rich capabilities across the spectrum of
operations. But with reserve component forces constituting an indispensable portion of our
deployed landpower in this protracted conflict, an industrial-age approach to mobilization
no longer will suffice. The model will shift from alert-mobilize-

16/17

train-deploy
to train-alert-deploy. Reserve component mobilization must take less time and
allow maximum mission time and more flexibility in managing individual and unit readiness,
mobilization and demobilization, deployment and redeployment, and post-deployment
recovery.

We will adjust the
active/reserve mix so that active component forces can execute the first 30 days of any
deployment. For that purpose, some high-demand, low-density capabilities currently found
only in the reserve components must be reincorporated in the active force. At the same
time, while we will not expect reserve component units to deploy in the first 30 days,
they will employ forces within hours for security operations within our homeland.
As with the active forces, the need to build predictability into reserve component
deployments will require increasing the proportion of high-demand, low-density units in
the reserve components. Finally, the shift to rotation-based unit manning rather than
individual replacement will apply to the reserve components also. As with the active
forces, therefore, we must find a way to account for unit mobilization, training, and
deployment with a realistic personnel overhead account.

Training and
Education

To change the
mindset of an Army, few tools are as important as its programs of training and education.
The US Army has long set the standard across the world in its commitment to Soldier and
leader development. This strong legacy is our fulcrum on which to leverage change. We
train for certainty while educating for uncertainty. Todays conflict presents both.

Individual
Training. The certainty confronting todays Soldiers is overseas deployment and
probable combat. Some will enter combat within weeks or months of their basic and advanced
individual training. Thrust into a conflict in which adversaries far outnumber their
comrades, our Soldiers must believe and demonstrate that quality is more important than
quantity, and that people are more important than hardware. On the battlefields we face,
there are no front lines and no rear areas; there are no secure garrisons or convoys.
Soldiers are warriors first, specialists second.

Therefore Soldier
training will be stressful, beyond the comfort zone. We will adapt our training programs
to generate the stress necessary to change behavior and increase learning. Training will
accurately represent the rigors and risks of combat. It will last longer than in the past
and will put teams and Soldiers through the exhausting, challenging, and dangerous tasks
of fighting. Soldiers will fight in body armor and will wear it in training. The safe
handling of loaded firearms must be second nature, live-fire training routine. For a
conflict of daunting ambiguity and complexity, training must imbue Soldiers with a
fundamental joint and expeditionary mindset; an atti-

17/18

tude of
multifunctionality rather than specialization, curiosity rather than complacency, and
initiative rather than compliance. Above all, training must build the confidence that our
Soldiers will prevail against any foe.

Collective
Training. Our Combat Training Centers (CTCs) drive the tactical culture of the Army.
They are the linchpin of our extraordinary battlefield success over the past two decades.
Given that every Army employment presumes a joint context, we will reinforce this key
condition throughout our collective training.

Therefore we have
begun introducing joint, interagency, and multinational components into our key training
experiences at both the CTCs and our Battle Command Training Program for division and
corps headquarters. We also support establishment of the Joint National Training
Capability and have begun routinely incorporating joint effects in our home-station
training. All these efforts will make Soldiers expert in the application of joint
capabilities at every organizational level. At the same time, at both CTCs and home
stations, we have transformed training environments to reflect the more complex and
ambiguous threats confronting our deployed forces. The ability to develop and disseminate
actionable intelligence must be a key training focus.

Integrated with
force stabilization cycles, CTC rotations will be the capstone experience for forces
preparing to deploy. But the heart of the Armys training remains the training
conducted at home stations by junior officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs). To
empower them, we must shake a legacy of planning-centric rather than execution-centric
training. We need battle drills rather than rock drills, free play rather than
scripted exercises, and Soldiers and units conditioned to seek out actionable intelligence
rather than waiting passively to receive it.

Professional
Education. Just as training must reflect the hard certainties of the conflict before
us, individual Soldier and leader education must address its uncertainties. George C.
Marshall once said that an Army at peace must go to school. Our challenge is to go to
school while at war. The need to teach Soldiers and leaders how to think rather
than what to think has never been clearer. To defeat adaptive enemies, we must
out-think them in order to out-fight them.

Technology can
enhance human capabilities, but at the end of the day, war remains more art than science,
and its successful prosecution will require battle command more than battle management. We
can have perfect knowledge with very imperfect understanding.
Appreciation of context transforms knowledge to understanding, and only education can make
that context accessible to us. Only education informed by experience will encourage
Soldiers and leaders to meet the irreducible uncertainties of war with con-

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fidence, and to act
decisively even when events fail to conform to planning assumptions and expectations.

As we improve
leaders skill and knowledge, we can rely more heavily on their artful application of
leader knowledge and intuition. Planning will be iterative and collaborative rather than
sequential and linear, more a framework for learning and action than a rigid template.
Adapting our military decisionmaking process will allow us to capitalize on the American
Soldiers inherent versatility, our growing ability to acquire and process
information, and the increased rapidity with which we can disseminate, coordinate, and
transform planning adjustments into effective action.

To that end, the
Army will continue to refocus institutional learning, shifting Center for Army Lessons
Learned collection assets from the CTCs to deployed units. Similarly, recognizing that a
learning organization cannot afford a culture of information ownership, we must streamline
the flow of combat information to assure broader and faster dissemination of actionable
intelligence.

At the individual
level, finally, there is no substitute for experiential learning, and todays Army is
the most operationally experienced Army in our history. There are tremendous opportunities
to leverage experience through our well-developed culture of After Action Reviews, Lessons
Learned, the great experience of the serving officers and NCOs, and the links from joint
and Army operational analyses to formal learningdistributed and in the classroom. At
the same time, some of the best battlefield lessons result from tragic but honest
mistakes. We cannot allow a zero-defects mentality to write off those who make such
mistakes, and we will review our leader evaluation systems to ensure they are leader
development tools and not mere management sorting tools.

Leader
Development. The Army has always prized leader development, and in peacetime has been
willing to accept some personnel turbulence to broaden career experience. That is not
acceptable for an army at war. Effective collective training requires the participation of
the entire team, and units are not merely training aids for commanders. If we are serious
about developing more versatile junior leaders, we must avoid too rapid a turnover of
those leaders in the name of career development.

The problem is
somewhat less acute for middle- and senior-grade officers, whose fewer numbers in any case
make greater assignment mobility unavoidable. Even in their case, however, the growing
complexity and political sensitivity of joint and expeditionary operations urges leaders
to seek assignments that inherently involve interpreting complex requirements and
implementing sophisticated solutions. Our legacy system of leader development will
certainly evolve, with the alteration of some current career roadmaps or the accreditation
of a greater variety of substitute experiences.

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Just as we
subordinate individual leader development to mission requirements, so too must we
subordinate institutional leader development to joint requirements. Army training and
education should produce imaginative staffs and commanders who understand how to interact
with other service leaders and how to get the most out of the full set of joint
capabilities. To produce leaders who reach instinctively beyond their own service for
solutions to tactical and operational problems, Army leader development must routinely
incorporate joint education and experience. In the end, we seek a bench of leaders able to
think creatively at every level of war, and able to operate with equal comfort in Army,
joint, interagency, and multinational environments. And if achieving that requires
submitting our internal educational institutions to joint oversight, we should not shrink
from it.

Doctrine,
Materiel, and Sustainment

Doctrine. The
Army rightfully views itself as doctrine-based. In the 1970s and 1980s,
doctrine was the engine that transformed the post-Vietnam Army into the victor of our
post-Cold War engagements. That doctrine, however, reflected the strategic environment
dominated by a singular adversary, and an opposing army in symmetric contrast to our own.
Although the challenge of developing doctrine for a joint and expeditionary environment is
different, it is no less essential.

In any era, doctrine
links theory, history, experimentation, and practice. It encapsulates a much larger body
of knowledge and experience, providing an authoritative statement about how military
forces do business and a common lexicon with which to describe it. As it has evolved since
the Cold War, Army doctrine portrays military operations as a seamless and dynamic
combination of offense, defense, stability, and support. Now we must extend it to address
enemies who deliberately eschew predictable operating patterns.

To deal with such
asymmetric opponents, doctrine must reflect the associated uncertainties. Uncertainty is
in some measure inseparable from the nature of warfare. Asymmetry merely increases it.
Doctrine cannot predict the precise nature and form of asymmetric engagements, but it can
forecast the kinds of knowledge and organizational qualities necessary to cope with them.

Such a doctrine,
however, cannot simply prescribe solutions. Rather, it must furnish the intellectual tools
with which to diagnose unexpected requirements, and a menu of practical options founded in
experience from which leaders can create their own solutions quickly and effectively. Its
objective must be to foster initiative and creative thinking. Such a doctrine is more
playbook than textbook, and like any playbook, it is merely a gateway to decision, not a
roadmap.

20/21

The US military
enjoys an immense array of capabilities that are useless if we overlook their
prerequisites and limitations. Doctrine can help frame those capabilities in context,
while not prescribing their rigid application in any given case. A doctrine intended for
our emerging strategic context must underwrite flexible thought and action, and thereby
assure the most creative exploitation of our own asymmetric advantages. It must also
account for the inherently joint character of all Army operations.

Most important in
todays environment, doctrine must acknowledge the adaptive nature of a thinking,
willful opponent and avoid both prediction and prescription. It is not the role of
doctrine to predict how an adversary will behave. Rather, its function is to enable us to
recognize that behavior, understand its vulnerabilities and our own, and suggest ways of
exploiting the former and diminishing the latter. It will be useful only to the extent
that experience confirms it, and its continuous review and timely amendment therefore is
essential.

Materiel.
Materiel development is a special challenge for an army at war, because we must not only
anticipate and address future needs, we must meet pressing current demands. There is,
however, a constant first priority: equipping the individual Soldier. In the past, the
Army reserved the best individual equipment for units most likely to fight; in an
expeditionary army, one cannot forecast such units. Every deployed Soldier needs the best
individual equipment available. In an expeditionary environment, moreover, we can no
longer continue to treat equipment as permanently owned by the units to which it is
assigned. In a rotation-based force, equipment ownership will be the exception. We will
increasingly separate Soldiers from their carriers and equipment, tailoring the materiel
mix for the mission at hand.

Being most amenable
to adaptability, speed, and flexibility, aviation assets will be key to an expeditionary
force. The lessons learned after two and a half years of war have provided our Army the
opportunity to reassess near-term aviation requirements. We will fundamentally restructure
our aviation program to ensure the entire Army aviation fleet remains a key tool of
maneuver, with better command-and-control connectivity, manned-unmanned teaming, extended
operational reach, and all-weather capability.

Equally vital is the
continued development of more rapidly deployable fighting platforms. The Future Combat
System (FCS) remains the materiel centerpiece of the Armys commitment to become more
expeditionary, and will go far to reconciling deployability with sustainable combat power.
We will remain a hybrid force for the foreseeable future, and we will seek ways to improve
the deployability of the platforms we already own.

Meanwhile, neither
current platforms nor the FCS will satisfy expeditionary requirements without significant
improvement in the ability to de-

21/22

velop actionable
intelligence and increase communications bandwidth at corps level and below. The Army,
together with the joint community, must relentlessly address the architectures, protocols,
and systems of a redundant, nonterrestrial network capable of providing the focused
bandwidth necessary to support mobile Battle Command and joint Blue Force tracking.
Lessons learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom continue to
highlight the successes and potential of network-enabled operations. The operational
advantages of shared situational awareness, enhanced speed of command, and the ability of
forces to self-synchronize are powerful. In this light, we must change the paradigm in
which we talk and think about the network; we must fight rather than manage the network,
and operators must see themselves as engaged at all times, ensuring the health and
operation of this critical weapons system.

Logistics.
The Cold War Army designed its logistical structure for operations in developed theaters
with access to an extensive host-nation infrastructure. Expeditionary operations promise
neither. Simultaneity and complexity compound the eternal constraints of decreased time,
vast distances, and limited resources, creating a pressing demand for a logistics system
that capitalizes on service interdependencies. We must operationally link logistics
support to maneuver in order to produce desired operational outcomes. We will realize such
effects-based logistics capability only when all services fully embrace joint
logistics, eliminate gaps in logistics functions, and reduce overlapping support. We
require a distribution-based sustainment system that provides end-to-end visibility of and
control over force-support operations; one that incorporates by design the versatility to
shift logistical support smoothly among multiple lines of operation and rapidly changing
support requirements.

At the tactical
level, that means eliminating todays layered support structure, instead bridging the
distance from theater or regional support commands to brigade combat teams with modular,
distribution-based capabilities packages. We intend to use the resources from current-day
corps and division support commands (COSCOMs and DISCOMs) to create joint-capable Army
Deployment and Sustainment Commands (ADSCs). These ADSCs will be capable of serving as the
foundation for a joint logistics command and control element at the Joint Task Force
(JTF), and capable also of simultaneously executing the full range of complex
operationsfrom theater port opening to employment and sustainmentrequired in
the emerging operational environment.

Finally, it is clear
that the physical security traditionally associated with the rearward location of
logistical facilities no longer can be assumed. On todays battlefields and
tomorrows, we must make explicit provision for

22/23

the protection of
logistical installations and the lines of communication joining them to combat formations.
And the Soldiers conducting sustainment operations must be armed, trained, and
psychologically prepared to fight as well as support.

Installations.
Installations are an integral part of the deployed force from home station to the foxhole.
Operational deployments and rotational assignments across the globe mean installation
capabilities will transcend more traditional expeditionary support requirements associated
with mobilizing, deploying, and sustaining the force. More than a jump point
for projecting forces, installations serve a fundamental role in minimizing
their footprint through robust connectivity and capacity to fully support reach-back
operations.

Installation
facilities must readily adapt to changing mission support needs, spiraling technology, and
rapid equipment fielding. Installation connectivity must also support en-route mission
planning and situational awareness. Education and family support will use the same
installation mission support connectivity to sustain the morale and emotional needs of our
Soldiers and their families.

Moving Out

The changes ahead
are significant. But they are neither reckless nor revolutionary. On the contrary, they
reflect years of Army study, experimentation, and experience. We have delayed this
transformation repeatedly, fearing that we could not afford such change in a time of
turbulence and reduced resources. Now we realize that what we cannot afford is more delay.
The 3rd Infantry Division is reorganizing today to a prototype redesign that converts its
combat structure from three brigades to four brigade combat teams. Other divisions will
soon follow.

The best way to
anticipate the future is to create it. The Army is moving out, and this is merely the
beginning. Our incentive is not change for changes sake. Our incentive is
effectiveness in this protracted conflict. If necessary to defeat our adaptive
adversaries, the changes described here are a mere down payment on changes that will
follow.

But our challenge is
to measure ourselves not against others, but against our own potential. It is not enough
that we are changing. The real question is, Are we changing enough? Our brave
Soldiers and adaptive leaders constitute the best Army in the world, but we can be even
better. It is inside of us and it is what the Nation expects. The future as we know
itour lives, the lives of our families, this country, everything we love and
cherishall depend on our success in meeting this challenge. Are you wearing your
dog tags?

Mr. Les Brownlee
became the 27th Under Secretary of the Army on 14 November 2001, following his nomination
by President George W. Bush and confirmation by the United States Senate. Since 10 May
2003, he has served as Acting Secretary of the Army. Mr. Brownlee is a retired Army
colonel. He was commissioned in 1962 as a lieutenant in the infantry through the ROTC
program at the University of Wyoming, and he holds a masters degree in business
administration from the University of Alabama. He is a distinguished honor graduate of the
US Army Ranger Course, an honor graduate of both the Infantry Officer Advanced Course and
the Army Command and General Staff College, and a graduate of the Armys airborne
course and the US Army War College. Mr. Brownlee served two tours in Vietnam.

General Peter J.
Schoomaker is the Chief of Staff, United States Army. His career has included more than 30
years with conventional and special operations forces. He participated in numerous
deployment operations, including Desert One in Iran, Urgent Fury in Grenada, Just Cause in
Panama, Desert Shield/Desert Storm in Southwest Asia, and Uphold Democracy in Haiti. A
graduate of the University of Wyoming, he holds an M.A. in management from Central
Michigan University and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Hampden-Sydney College. He is a
graduate of the Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School, the Army Command and General Staff
College, and the National War College. His most recent previous assignment was as
Commander in Chief, United States Special Operations Command.